Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a device in a semiconductor manufacturing installation, in particular for integrated circuits, with at least one electrical and mechanical test device, an inscription station and a final packaging station, in which the components are finally packaged for delivery.
Such devices are used at the end of production lines for electrical components, such as integrated circuits, in order to pick up the electrical components, which have already been mounted into housings, at the end of the production line, feed them to a marking station (e.g. a laser inscription station) and then deposit them into suitable packaging in a packaging station. In the inscription station, the housing of the electrical component is inscribed, by means of a laser, with a type designation, batch number, manufacturer detail, etc. In the packaging station, the electrical component is placed into suitable packaging according to customers' requests. As a packaging unit, the finished mounted and inscribed components can optionally be deposited in so-called plastic tapes, plastic tubes or plastic trays. Plastic tapes should in this case be understood to mean plastic belts having incorporated pockets into which the electrical components are placed. The pockets are then covered by a transparent cover film and welded to the cover film. These plastic tapes can be filled very rapidly. Plastic tubes are the sufficiently known plastic tubes into which the electrical components are successively filled. The plastic tubes are closed off at their ends by means of suitable cover caps. These plastic tubes have the disadvantage that the electrical components, in particular highly sensitive integrated circuits, can easily be damaged due to their mutually butting against one another. Plastic trays are parallelepipedal plastic frames provided with partitions in a chessboard pattern. One of the electrical components is respectively inserted into the individual chambers formed by the partitions. Such plastic trays provide the electrical components or integrated circuits inserted into the individual chambers with extremely good protection against transport damage.
The quality control of electrical components and the process control of production machines in the manufacture of electrical components, in particular integrated circuits, is extremely important in order to ensure that the components supplied by the manufacturer meet customers' requirements. To date, the quality control of electrical components or the process control of production machines has been carried out largely manually, off-line and after the manner of random sampling in the mounting of electrical components, in particular integrated circuits.
In this case, the monitoring of so-called marking and package defects after the laser inscription of the electrical components represents the last inspection before the components are packaged into the above-mentioned plastic tapes, tubes or trays. Marking defects should be understood to mean defects in the inscription of the component, and package defects should be understood to mean housing defects of the components. The materials are usually inspected with regard to marking and package defects after the laser marking by random sampling in loose subjective observation of the components. This arbitrary observation of the components in a random sampling manner takes place either immediately before the packaging of the electrical components or immediately after the laser marking of the components, the components being deposited onto a plate for the purpose of laser marking. In principle, it is possible to assist this random-sampling check of the components for marking and package defects by using a suitable camera. For this purpose, the camera must be directed at the inscribed upper side of the electrical component, the image of the component that is recorded by the camera being made visible on a monitor, thereby improving the ergonomics of visual inspection. When there are conspicuous marking and/or package defects, the handler can be stopped by the operator in order to rectify the causes of the defect in the production line and/or during laser marking.
The subjective observation of the components themselves or of the components via a monitor is unsatisfactory for reliable quality control. On the one hand, the operator is not able to check each of the components given high machine cycles of the production line, for example less than 600 msec. On the other hand, inattentiveness by the operator during random-sampling checks of the components can give rise to the situation whereby the operator overlooks defective components. Finally, it is extremely difficult for the operator to perceive small inscription defects or small housing defects on the electrical component visually.
Furthermore, in customary modern installations for manufacturing semiconductor components, the work steps "testing", "inscribing" and "packaging", are carried out at a plurality of individual installations and individual work stations. For this purpose, it is necessary to deposit the components repeatedly into "tubes" or "trays" as intermediate packaging, convey them to the corresponding work station and laboriously unpack them there in order further to test or to process the components. This necessitates a considerable handling outlay. The apparent and primary disadvantages include long handling times, a larger number of personnel involved therein and also large intermediate stores, so-called buffers, for keeping the components ready at the respective station. This last measure requires a great deal of space.
Furthermore, the sequence of different production steps one after the other on different machines leads to a long throughput time and to a long total production time. Moreover, the quality is reduced by the large number of processing steps, because the necessary repeated repacking of the components can easily lead to damage to the component and its supply leads.
It is also disadvantageous that once the tests have been performed on the components, the manufacturer of the components frequently desires that the components be separated into different quality and/or defect classes. In doing this, it has not been possible to date to preclude a mix-up or a mistake. For this reason, a high logistic outlay and testing outlay have been used to date in an attempt to keep this risk as low as possible.
Furthermore, quality documentation has been possible to date only in a very complicated and laborious manner owing to the large number of individual processes at different work stations.